heart. He put on
his armour, and arrayed the chiefs on foot in front of their chariots,
and behind them came the spearmen, with the bowmen and slingers on the
wings of the army. Then a great black cloud spread over the sky, and
red was the rain that fell from it. The Trojans gathered on a height in
the plain, and Hector, shining in armour, went here and there, in front
and rear, like a star that now gleams forth and now is hidden in a
cloud.

The armies rushed on each other and hewed each other down, as reapers
cut their way through a field of tall corn. Neither side gave ground,
though the helmets of the bravest Trojans might be seen deep in the
ranks of the Greeks; and the swords of the bravest Greeks rose and fell
in the ranks of the Trojans, and all the while the arrows showered like
rain. But at noon-day, when the weary woodman rests from cutting trees,
and takes his dinner in the quiet hills, the Greeks of the first line
made a charge, Agamemnon running in front of them, and he speared two
Trojans, and took their breastplates, which he laid in his chariot, and
then he speared one brother of Hector and struck another down with his
sword, and killed two more who vainly asked to be made prisoners of war.
Footmen slew footmen, and chariot men slew chariot men, and they broke
into the Trojan line as fire falls on a forest in a windy day, leaping
and roaring and racing through the trees. Many an empty chariot did the
horses hurry madly through the field, for the charioteers were lying
dead, with the greedy vultures hovering above them, flapping their wide
wings. Still Agamemnon followed and slew the hindmost Trojans, but the
rest fled till they came to the gates, and the oak tree that grew
outside the gates, and there they stopped.

But Hector held his hands from fighting, for in the meantime he was
making his men face the enemy and form up in line and take breath, and
was encouraging them, for they had retreated from the wall of the
Greeks across the whole plain, past the hill that was the tomb of Ilus,
a king of old, and past the place of the wild fig-tree. Much ado had
Hector to rally the Trojans, but he knew that when men do turn again
they are hard to beat. So it proved, for when the Trojans had rallied
and formed in line, Agamemnon slew a Thracian chief who had come to
fight for Troy before King Rhesus came. But the eldest brother of the
slain man smote Agamemnon through the arm with his spear, and, though
Agam